Password originally aired for 1,555 daytime telecasts each weekday from October 2, 1961 to September 15, 1967 on CBS, along with weekly prime time airings from January 2, 1962 to September 9, 1965 and December 25, 1966 to May 22, 1967.[1] An additional 1,099 daytime shows aired from April 5, 1971 to June 27, 1975 on ABC.

Two teams, each consisting of one celebrity player and one "civilian" contestant, competed. The word to be conveyed (the "password") was given to one player on each team and was shown to the studio audience and home viewers (also they get to hear it). Game play alternated between the two teams. On each team, the player who was given the password gave a one-word clue from which their partner attempted to guess the password. If the partner failed to guess the password within the allotted five-second time limit, or if an illegal clue was given (two or more words, a hyphenated word, "coined" words, or any part or form of the password), play passed to the opposing team.

The game continued until one of the players guessed the password correctly or until ten clues had been given. Scoring was based on the number of clues given when the password was guessed, e.g. 10 points were awarded for guessing the password on the first clue, nine points on the second clue, eight points on the third clue, etc., down to one point on the tenth and final clue. On the ABC version a limit of six clues was imposed to expedite game play, with the last clue worth five points. In addition, teams were given the option of either playing or passing control of the first clue to the opposing team. Specifically, the team that was trailing in score, or that had lost the previous game, was offered the pass/play option; when the score was tied, the team that failed to get the previous password was awarded the pass/play option.

On the daytime edition, the first team to reach 25 points won that contestant $100. On the nighttime edition, the winner won $250. The winning team earned a chance to win up to an additional $250 by playing the "Lightning Round", in which the civilian contestant on the prevailing team tried to guess five passwords within 60 seconds from clues given by his/her celebrity partner. $50 was awarded for each correctly guessed password (increased to $100 from 1973 to 1974).

The Lightning Round was among the first bonus rounds on a television game (along with the scrambled phrase game on the original Beat the Clock). On the ABC version from 1971 to 1974, immediately after completing the Lightning Round the player was given a chance at "the Betting Word," in which they could wager any amount of his/her winnings on his/her celebrity partner's ability to guess it within 15 seconds. This increased the maximum bonus prize to $500 ($1,000 from 1973 to 1974 when the regular Lightning Round values were doubled).

On each episode from 1961 to 1975, Ludden would caution the players about unacceptable clues by stating, "When you hear this sound (a buzzer would sound) it means your clue has not been accepted by our authority, (name of word authority)." Word authorities on the CBS version included New York University professor David H. Greene and World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary editor Dr. Reason A. Goodwin (that dictionary being still a work-in-progress at the time of the show's first airing, first appearing in print form in 1963). Robert Stockwell from UCLA and Carolyn Duncan served as word authorities during the ABC version.

The practice of the announcer whispering the password to the home audience—as well as displaying it on screen—was devised by creator Bob Stewart for the benefit of his mother, who could speak but not read English[citation needed]. Clark, Vines, and Harlan did this on the first two versions of the show, but the practice was discontinued, beginning with Password All-Stars, when a computer (referred to as "Murphy" on-camera by Allen Ludden) was incorporated; it would display the password, one letter at a time (like a typewriter), followed by the quotation marks. A beeping sound would accompany each letter as it appeared on the screen. A final beep would signal that the password was revealed to the home viewer, and play would start. On Password Plus, a bell would ring when the password was revealed. On Super Password from September 24, 1984 to October 31, 1986, a chirping sound was heard when the password was revealed. However, Gene Wood began whispering the words on Super Password just like in the original, starting on November 3, 1986. The practice was again discontinued on Million Dollar Password.

Before the cancellation of the Goodson-Todman game show Snap Judgment on NBC in 1969, that program's set was changed in order to make it resemble the look of the CBS Password. Goodson-Todman did this to correspond to rule changes that, in fact, made Snap Judgment identical to Password.

On the CBS daytime version, contestants played two matches, win or lose, with each game awarding $100 to the winner. For most of the CBS nighttime version's first year, the same two players stayed for the entire show, playing as many matches as time allowed. However, after three contestants managed to break the $1,000 mark (which made CBS nervous in the early post-quiz show scandal days), this practice was changed in November 1962 to having two new contestants play each game (generally, three pairs of contestants competed in the course of each show), with winning contestants receiving $250 and losers receiving $50.

For only two shows in July 1965, the nighttime version experimented with a "championship match" format, in which the winners of games 1 and 2 would return to compete against each other in the final game. Also in 1965, the show adopted an annual "Tournament of Champions" where contestants on the daytime version who won both their games were invited back to compete for more money.

Early on the ABC version, winning contestants could stay until either defeated or win a maximum of 10 games, thus retiring them as undefeated champions. Later on, the limit was dropped, and champions stayed on the show until defeated. From 1973 to 1974, the first contestant to win a two-out-of-three match played the Lightning Round.

Every three months, the four top winners during that period would return for a quarterly contest. The winner would earn $1,000 and the right to compete in the annual Tournament of Champions. The winner of the annual contest won $5,000 and faced the previous year's champion in a best-of-seven match for $10,000. Lewis Retrim, from Boston, won the Tournament of Champions three years in a row.

From November 18, 1974 to February 21, 1975 Password became Password All-Stars, where teams of celebrities played for charity in a tournament-style format. At the end of each week, the highest scorer would win $5,000 and advance to the Grandmasters' Championship, which would award the winner another $25,000. The first tournament's finalists were Dick Gautier, James Shigeta, Peter Bonerz, and Don Galloway, with Shigeta winning the championship; the second tournament's finalists were Richard Dawson, Bill Bixby, Hal Linden, and Betty White, with Dawson winning the championship (Dawson had almost made it to the first tournament finals, but Gautier beat him out during their preliminary week by just one point).

After the celebrity format modification proved unpopular with viewers, Goodson-Todman made Password All-Stars simply Password again, but the show carried over elements of All-Stars mainly in order to use the set that had been redesigned for the all-celebrity period. Among these were an elimination round in which four contestants (two new players and the two players from the previous game) competed with the help of the two celebrities in the first round. In the qualifying round, one of the two celebrities used a one-word clue to a password (with both celebrities alternating turns on giving clues), and the four contestants would ring in with the password. A correct response earned that contestant one point, with three points needed to qualify for the regular game. An incorrect response locks that player out of the word in play. The first two contestants to reach three points went on to play the regular Password game.

In the regular game, an addition to the rules was the "double" option, which the first clue giver could ask to increase the word value to 20 points by giving only one clue; if that word was missed, the other team could score the 20 points with a second clue. The first team to reach 50 points or more could win thousands of dollars in the Big Money Lightning Round, using a three-step structure in which the winning team attempted to guess three passwords within 30 seconds per step. The contestant was paid as follows:

Part One: Each password paid $25. Guessing all three passwords in 30 seconds further netted $5 for each second left on the clock. The round ended if the contestant was unable to guess at least one of the three passwords.

Part Two: The money earned in part one would be multiplied by the number of passwords guessed here. Naming all three passwords this time added $10 for each second left. If the receiver failed to identify at least one of the passwords here, the round ended and the contestant still kept all part-one winnings; he or she then returned to the elimination panel to compete for the right to play the main game again.

Part Three: Naming all three passwords in 30 seconds multiplied the contestant's part-two winnings tenfold (meaning if a player accumulated $500 after two parts, guessing all three passwords in this part would earn $5,000).

With Goodson-Todman established as a reliable producer of high-rated games for CBS, including What's My Line?, To Tell the Truth, and I've Got a Secret, the network confidently gave the new word association game the 2:00 PM (1:00 Central) time slot, replacing the courtroom-themed game Face the Facts. As television's first successful celebrity-civilian team game, Password attracted a large and loyal audience that made it into a solid Nielsen favorite for nearly five years as shows came and went with great frequency on the other networks. A concurrent prime time version which debuted in January 1962 was also successful, albeit somewhat less than the daytime show; despite this, both versions performed strongly in the ratings and looked to run well past the late 1960s.

But on July 11, 1966, CBS preempted Password in favor of CBS News' live coverage of a press conference held by Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara on the progress of the Vietnam War. Because the other two networks did not grant their news divisions anywhere near the power that CBS did in making programming decisions, they went ahead with their regular schedules instead of the conference. A new show beginning that day on ABC—The Newlywed Game—caused some frustrated Password fans to begin defecting immediately; NBC also benefited from the CBS programming decision, experiencing success with their recently launched soap operaDays of Our Lives.

Over the next year, Newlywed and Days wore down Password. CBS daytime head Fred Silverman, who was not a personal fan of the genre, had seen enough by Spring 1967 and decided to cancel Password. The cancellation occurred after squabbles over where the show would be taped (New York City or Hollywood). Silverman wanted the show permanently moved to CBS Television City (where it was moved for part of the 1966–1967 season to allow the show to tape in color, as CBS' New York studios had dragged out its full switch to colorization). Host Ludden had moved to California at that time, and commuted back to New York for the last part of the 1966–1967 season. During that season, Bern Bennett and Lee Vines (who replaced Jack Clark as primary announcer) shared West Coast announcing duties, and when the show returned to New York, Vines made the commute as well.

Password was most often taped in New York at CBS-TV Studio 52 (later converted to the Studio 54 discothèque) and CBS-TV Studio 50 (the Ed Sullivan Theater) until the end of the daytime run in 1967. The original CBS version made annual trips to CBS Television City during the 1960s, including once when the CBS New York studios were refurbished for color TV. During its run, Password was taped in all four of the studios at different times (31, 33, 41 and 43).[4]

As Mark Goodson opposed a permanent move of the show to Hollywood, Silverman canceled the series on September 15, 1967. Password was replaced by a CBS-produced soap, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, which had a five-and-a-half-year run.

The show made its way into The Odd Couple when Oscar and Felix became contestants in 1973.

In the meantime, though, Goodson-Todman sold reruns of the CBS version to local stations via syndication in the late 1960s, and in some markets they performed quite well in mid-morning or late-afternoon slots. This prompted ABC to contact Mark Goodson about reviving the game; this time around, Goodson agreed to have the show tape in Hollywood per ABC's wishes. Password (commonly called Password ABC to distinguish it from the CBS run) would become Goodson-Todman's first show to be staged in Los Angeles full-time rather than New York City; eventually the company moved almost all production to southern California during the 1970s. The show was taped at ABC Studio TV-10, "The Vine Street Theater," in Hollywood and the ABC Television Center.

The network and packager faced an unusual and potentially disturbing obstacle, however. The network slated Password to replace the cult soap Dark Shadows at 4:00 PM (3:00 Central) on April 5, 1971. Some of the more devoted Shadows fans threatened ABC with physical disruption of the first tapings of Password at the Hollywood studios. However, these plans apparently never materialized and ABC went ahead, managing strong results against NBC's Somerset and reruns of Gomer Pyle, USMC on CBS.

Pleased with its performance, ABC promoted the show to 12:30 PM (11:30 AM Central) on September 6, where it faced stronger challenges in the form of CBS' long-running Search for Tomorrow and NBC's The Who, What, or Where Game, which had been on for two years at this point. Nonetheless, Password held up well there for six months until the network moved it up a half-hour to 12:00 Noon (11:00 AM Central) on March 20, 1972 for the new Hatos-Hall game Split Second.

At Noon, Password came in a solid second to NBC's Jeopardy! but easily defeated the three-year-old CBS soap Where the Heart Is. However, CBS would replace Heart on March 26, 1973 with the youth-oriented The Young and the Restless, causing Password and Jeopardy! to hit ratings trouble that Summer—in large measure due to the college and high school-aged viewers being lured away from the intellectual pair to the serial.

Even though NBC moved Jeopardy! on January 7, 1974 from Noon to 10:30 AM (9:30 Central) in favor of Jackpot!, the ABC Password was sliding into third place. In May, the show won the first-ever Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show; from that point until the overhaul in November, a large Emmy statue became part of the set's backdrop.

Beginning on July 15, 1974 several gimmicks were tried to boost ratings.[5] This included:

Monty Hall guest-hosting for several weeks; from July 15 to the 26th he did two weeks with Ludden and Elizabeth Montgomery as the celebrities, while the third (September 23–27) was a "Four-Celebrity Charity Week" with Ludden and his wife Betty White competing as a team against celebrities including Richard Dawson, Arlene Francis, Vicki Lawrence, and White's mother Tess.

Several other celebrity-filled weeks for charity were also held from July 29 to August 2, September 16–20, and October 14–18.

A week (September 2–6) in which Joyce Bulifant and Joseph Campanella played with their children ("Celebrities and Their Children Week"); this was followed by "Celebrities and Their Wives Week" from September 9 to the 13th and a "Celebrity Husbands & Wives Charity Week" from September 30 to October 4.

Two weeks containing big winners from throughout the show's run aired from October 21 to November 1; this was followed from November 4 through the 8th by a week in which the show's producers and writers played the game for charity with George Peppard and Linda Kaye Henning.

On November 18 (after one final week of unknown content) the show decided to take a risk, at the insistence of ABC, on an all-celebrity format called Password All-Stars. Although Goodson-Todman had success with celebrity-driven formats such as Match Game (which debuted in 1973) and Tattletales (which began earlier in the year) through the late 1970s, the lack of civilian contestants and significantly altered rules on Password drove even more viewers away.

On February 24, 1975, Goodson-Todman abandoned the format (but changed the contestant configuration in order to avoid another set redesign) in a last-ditch effort to save the program, but it was too late – although Password was given another eighteen weeks, ABC had all but given up on the show. Aside from a week in which Betty White hosted while her husband played (March 24–28), no more gimmicks were attempted for the rest of the run.

On June 27, 1975, four members of the show's staff played a "mock game" which filled some time after the final Lightning Round.[6] Mark Goodson then appeared to declare Ludden "Mr. Password" and mentioned that numerous elementary schoolteachers in the U.S. used the various editions of the Milton Bradley-packaged home game as a tool to teach their pupils English. Ludden and White then gave an emotional farewell. All was not lost for Goodson-Todman, however, as Password was replaced with a new game—their ill-fated Showoffs, which lasted six months.

In 1978, Goodson-Todman tried again and successfully brought Password to NBC on January 8, 1979. Originally titled Password '79, celebrity guest Carol Burnett remarked during a run-through that with the various new elements the show had adopted, it was "Password Plus".

NBC brought Password back as Password Plus on January 8, 1979 with Allen Ludden returning as host. It was originally announced in Variety magazine as Password '79, in the manner that Match Game named its 1973 version with the year. The show ran until March 26, 1982. Ludden had left the show for several weeks in 1980 due to undisclosed surgery (he had stomach cancer) and Bill Cullen substituted for him. Allen Ludden returned for a time afterwards, until it was reported he had suffered a stroke; he died from his cancer in June 1981. It was reputed that he had hoped to recover and return to the show, but in the event that wouldn't happen, he had specifically requested that Tom Kennedy succeed him, as Cullen was at the time already hosting Blockbusters.

On September 24, 1984 NBC brought the format back as Super Password with Bert Convy hosting. Rich Jeffries was the first announcer until November 23, 1984 and filled in for Wood sporadically thereafter. Bob Hilton also filled in on occasion on the show.

Super Password ran until March 24, 1989 and was canceled on the same day as another NBC game show, Sale of the Century (which was itself a revival). In some markets in the Eastern time zone, the show was preempted by local news due to its Noon time slot. NBC stations in the Central and Pacific time zones usually preempted Scrabble at 11:30 for local news and aired Super Password at 11:00.

All of the CBS prime time episodes were preserved on videotape, and have aired on GSN. The final year of the CBS daytime version and the second prime time version were preserved on color videotape, as the producers chose to syndicate those reruns following the program's first cancellation. Most of the earlier daytime episodes are presumed lost; at least two daytime episodes are available on home video, each one as part of a general game show compilation package.

The ABC version is considered to be almost completely gone. Clips from the December 7, 1971 episode featuring Brett Somers and Jack Klugman were featured on VH1's I Love the '70s: Volume 2 in 2006. GSN aired the complete Somers/Klugman episode on September 11, 2006 in the early morning hours as part of its weekly overnight classic game-show programming (and aired it again in tribute following Somers' death).

A second studio master from February 14, 1972 with Sheila MacRae and Martin Milner is also known to have survived; the opening of that episode can be seen on YouTube. Three episodes from 1975 circulate amongst collectors, two as recorded by home viewers: the Password All-Stars Finale; a studio master of episode #15 of the big-money revamp (March 14, 1975) with Betty White and Vicki Lawrence; and the June 27, 1975 Finale with Kate Jackson and Sam Melville. An audio recording of an episode featuring Jack Klugman and Loretta Swit from 1975 is also known to have survived. A few more episodes from this run are held in UCLA's film and television archive.

It is believed that the videotapes that were used for the ABC Password were recycled and reused for the Dawson version of Family Feud, which began on July 12, 1976.

On December 2, 2008, BCI/Eclipse released a DVD box set "The Best of PASSWORD: The CBS Years 1962–1967". The set predominately features the nighttime show, with most of the final disc containing daytime episodes from 1967; notably, despite their existence, neither the nighttime nor daytime finales are present.

Although Password began in 1961, the DVD set consistently states "The CBS Years: 1962–1967"; this misleading title may be due to the earliest episode on the set being the nighttime premiere, which aired in early 1962. A rerelease by Mill Creek (which acquired the rights to the Fremantle game-show DVD sets following BCI's collapse) corrected this error.

An early mock-up of the packaging showed host Ludden on the later CBS set with the original ABC logo on the front of the desk (as well as on the spine), while a slew of celebrities were listed on the bottom of the cover. Further, the press release stated that set would range "from the early 1960s all the way up to the mid 1970s", indicating that ABC episodes would be included.[7] A later update to the box art removed the celebrity list and clarified that the set would only cover the CBS era, although the ABC logo was still present (the front cover now had it in place of the CBS logo above Ludden).[8] The ABC logo was omitted altogether when the DVD set was released, with the CBS logo behind Ludden in the original picture being enlarged.

The theme song used on Password from 1961 to 1963 was called "Holiday Jaunt", composed by Kurt Rehfeld. That theme was followed later by "You Know the Password", composed by Bob Cobert, which was used from 1963 until the CBS version's cancellation in 1967. When Password returned on ABC in 1971, Score Productions composed "The Fun of It". The theme used later in that version's run, beginning with Password All-Stars in 1974, was called "Bicentennial Funk", which was used until the ABC version's finale in 1975. That theme, as well as the themes for Password Plus and Super Password, was also composed by Score Productions.

A version called Pyramide, inspired both by Pyramid and Password series, aired on Antenne 2 then France 2 from 1991 to 2003. An adaptation of the 'Million-Dollar Password' format currently airs on France 2, where it is called 'Mot de Passe'.[10] The show is rebroadcast in Canada on TV5.[11]

A version based on the Million-Dollar Password format has been adapted for their audience. The program, entitled Password, premiered on July 7, 2008.[13] Hosted by Luján Argüelles, it is nearly identical to the 2008 Philbin version. The biggest differences include the top prize of €25,000 and changing the program to a forty-five minute (with commercials) weekday broadcast.

Although Password can be played without any equipment, commercial versions of the game have been successful.

The Milton Bradley Company introduced the first home version of Password in 1962 and subsequently released 24 editions of the game until 1986. (Owing to common superstition, these releases were numbered 1-12 and 14-25, skipping 13.) It was tied with Concentration as the most prolific of Milton Bradley's home versions of popular game shows, and was produced well into the Super Password era of the television show. Milton Bradley also published three editions of a Password Plus home game between 1979 and 1981, but never did a version for Super Password.

More recently, Endless Games has released seven editions of Password since 1997, including a children's edition (with gameplay closer to the various incarnations of Pyramid) and a DVD edition featuring the voice of Todd Newton (notably, the latter uses the original ABC logo on its packaging). In addition, Endless released a home version of Million-Dollar Password in 2008.

A computer version of Super Password was released by GameTek for MS-DOS systems, as well as the Apple II and Commodore 64, shortly before the series was canceled; a Nintendo Entertainment System version was also planned but never released. Tiger Electronics released an electronic hand-held "Super Password" game in the late 1990s, many years after the show had been canceled. More recently, Irwin Toys released a new hand-held electronic version featuring a touch screen with stylus to enter words.

As with several other Goodson-Todman game shows, Password has been adapted into a slot machine by WMS Gaming. A simulated Allen Ludden emcees the proceedings, with the voices and caricatures of Rose Marie, Dawn Wells, Adam West, and Marty Allen. One bonus round offers the player free spins; the other involves choosing from four envelopes offered by the celebrities. Finding the "Password" envelope advances the player to a new level with four more envelopes, worth more prize money.[1]